Hmm, that’s odd, I thought this would be big news. Well, there seems to be an absence of a certain ornithological piece. A headline regarding mass awareness of a certain avian variety. Oh, have you not heard?
If you are one of the few who has yet to have heard, the word is that of the bird. Specifically, UR’s new club: Birding Club! No, not badminton, with their little hittable feather dusters, nor some cult to Chick-fil-A’s allegedly unmatched fried chicken, but a real club! Dedicated to real birds! With wings and feathers and all the fixings! The club meets once a week to observe the local fauna on campus and the greater Rochester area. Birding Club, however, has realized what the vast majority of onlookers have known for quite some time: These birds are fucking lame. Birding club, knowing of birds, has arrived to the conclusion that not all birds are lame, just the local populations. To fix such an unfortunate situation, the Birding Club turned to South America, where larger, more potent avians lie. The means of acquisition of said large, very large, bird… that is less than important! They somehow managed to side skirt customs, leading to a temporary but definite influx of large predatory birds to this country. Birders without borders, as I’m calling them, but without the humanitarian aspects and animal trafficking up the wazoo.
Now that the bird is in the country, Birding Club, without contacting our dearest friends in the biology department, simply released the critter into the wilds of Genesee Valley Park. Is this an invasive species? What may the greater impacts of this bird happen to be, apart from the obvious “haha funny large birb.”
The funny thing about a falcon standing at two feet tall is it very rapidly becomes a hungry little feller. And do you know what a very large bird of prey does when it’s hungry? It eats smaller animals. Squirrels, rabbits, smaller birds, it’ll even try for one of our own beloved (a groundhog, of the above ground variant). The skies and grassy lawns throughout campus suddenly became void of life, besides the occasional appearance of a malnourished quad fox.
“What else can a falcon do for Birding Club?” wondered Birding Club. “A courier service!” they rapidly, yet thoughtlessly concluded. Within no time at all, the phrase “the bird ate my problem set” became commonplace, as sleep deprived students would try to fly their work to their professors instead of simply walking. The menace was like Batman, but indiscriminate in its administration of violence. And also not a bat.
Despite the chaos, the recent events highlighted the creature’s talented talons. It was at this point that the club became malicious. It was evidently very easy to train the bird to crush an unsuspecting victim’s coffee cup in their hand mid-flight. Falcon hit-and-runs continued for roughly a week before someone got a little defensive of their eight-dollar Starbucks beverage, grabbed it by the wing, and spooked it enough to never come back to campus again.
Some say he resides in Genesee Valley Park, just like the old days. Others claim he flew right back to South America. Despite his departure from the River Campus, his reign of terror will linger, with only Birding Club to blame.
